Le Pupille is set in an Italian orphanage and follows a group of girls rebelling against nuns. Backed by Disney and Alfonso Cuarón, the film is directed by celebrated Italian director Alice Rohrwacher. The girls are effortlessly adorable and funny, especially Melissa Falascon, who portrays the protagonist, Serafina. Admittedly, of the five films nominated, Le Pupille was easily my least favorite of the group.

Written and directed by Mr. Nguyen, a Vietnamese-Québécois filmmaker based in Montréal, the movie milieu is the genocidal Congo wars of the 1990s and early 2000s, in which disease and starvation killed more than 5 million non-combatants. The focus of Nguyen’s tale is a girl named Komona (Mwanza), kidnapped at age 12 by a band of heavily armed thugs loyal to a warlord called Great Tiger.